US 'used NGOs to create chaos in Egypt': minister

[FarCenter]

An Egyptian minister seen as the driving force behind impending trials of democracy activists, including 19 Americans, told investigators that Washington funded their groups to create a state of prolonged chaos in Egypt, official media reported Monday.

International cooperation minister Fayza Abul Naga, believed to be the instigator of a judicial probe into foreign-funded civil society groups, made the accusation in testimony to the investigating judges in October.

Abul Naga, one of the few remaining ministers from president Hosni Mubarak's era, added that the United States and Israel wanted to hijack Egypt's uprising that toppled Mubarak a year ago to serve the interests of Washington and the Jewish state.

"The United States and Israel could not create a state of chaos and work to maintain it in Egypt directly, so they used direct funding to organisations, especially American, as a means of implementing these goals," the official MENA news agency quoted her as saying, in the first public disclosure of the claims.

http://www.france24.com/en/20120213-us-used-ngos-create-chaos-egypt-minister

[pampango]

1. Right, because no Egyptian would "create chaos", i.e. demonstrate, about the refusal of the military

to relinguish power to a civilian government. It must be foreigners at work creating this dissatisfaction.

Egypts' military government promoting xenophobia to control protests

http://www.theworld.org/2012/02/growing-xenophobia-egypt/

...the current government – the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, or SCAF – is taking this very real sense of outside threat and whipping it up into fullblown xenophobia through State TV and radio. “There is a deliberate use of this xenophobic language, of this suspicion of foreigners by SCAF and by the Minister of International Cooperation,” he said.

There have been verbal and physical attacks, as well as citizen arrests. Baghat said foreigners are caught in the crossfire as the Egyptian government tries to undermine the continued protests. “It presents the political protest movement in Egypt as being primarily pushed by the famous foreign agendas. And the foreign agendas are normally understood to mean western agendas,” he said.

Even so, Historian Khaled Fahmy said it’s clear there is a concerted campaign against foreigners. And he said the Egyptian government shouldn’t just worry about the safety of tourists, but about the very foundation of Egyptian society. “Egypt throughout its long history thrived not by being shunned off and shut out and inward looking, but rather by being open and engaged, and by interacting.”

http://www.theworld.org/2012/02/growing-xenophobia-egypt/

It serves the purpose of the military government in Egypt to portray the protests there not as an indication of the massive discontent with the military's reluctance to give up power, but rather as a foreign plot against Egypt. Why would anyone not want the army to rule the country indefinitely?